by Ann Mayburn
Or, in this case, someones.
The sense of loss she’d been trying to ignore grew stronger as she wished with all her heart Gwarnon and Chel could be there right then. Not wanting her sadness to somehow leak to Jillian, she tried to strengthen the shield in her mind. The last thing she wanted was to hurt her daughter with her emotions. Anxiety hit her hard, and she wished Chel was there with his soothing calm, and Gwarnon with his rock-solid presence. With them at her side, she felt not only loved but protected.
Yes, she was a kick ass woman who could take care of herself, but knowing the men at her side will keep her safe was a nice one. A novel feeling, actually, considering her usual shit ass taste in men. For a moment, her mind flickered to Jillian’s father, and wondered if someday he’d come looking for the daughter he’d long ago abandoned. A small, evil part of her wished he would somehow know that Jillian was happy, loved, and cherished on an amazing new world where her potential was limitless.
“Tara,” the sexy lumberjack rumbled. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, I’m just a little overwhelmed. I’ve been so worried…” Standing between the men, holding their hands, Lacey’s mom turned to her and said, “Honey, I’d like you to meet my husbands, Karwin and Phin. We met on Earth shortly after you were deployed.”
Karwin, the more savage looking of the two men with red and black hair, gave her a warm smile that changed him from intimidating to friendly. “It is our greatest honor to meet you, daughter of our heart.”
Startled, she blinked for a moment before she gave a soft laugh, shifting Jillian from one arm to the other as the little girl continued to snuggle close. “Wow, that’s right. I guess you guys are my stepdads.”
Phin’s chest visibly swelled as he smiled. “We are, and we are incredibly honored and swear to always protect you and treat you as our own.”
Jillian wiggled out of her arms, then crouched down and picked up the hopping ball of blue and white fur that was making an odd chirp, kind of like a squeaky toy. “Mommy! Meet Daniel!”
She gave the cute bunny/squirrel looking creature a hug big enough that Lacey was afraid she might hurt the creature, but it didn’t seem to mind.
“He is very cute, but remember to be gentle,” Lacey said as she smiled down at her daughter before looking back to her mom standing with her bondmates. “We need to talk.”
The smile left Tara’s face, her red lips firming into that familiar line that meant she was tired of someone’s shit. “We do. Why don’t we show you to your rooms? You can get washed up and have something to eat, then we’ll talk—” Tara glanced around. A crowd still watched them from a distance at the landing port. “Without so many ears listening. I must say, daughter of mine, you are quite the celebrity. Come on.”
Holding Jillian’s hand in her own, Lacey nodded and followed her mother across the landing pad and into the gigantic forest.
Once Jillian had been led away by Wythe to go have dinner with some friends she’d made at the manor, Tara took Lacey off into a side room while her husbands stayed outside.
The silence of the large, lush indoor garden was broken by light lavender water spilling over silver rocks from a nearby fountain of a beautiful woman surrounded by foaming waves of purple water.
Looking at the fountain closer, Lacey did a double take then said, “Is that you?”
“What?” her mom asked, then followed Lacey’s line of sight past all the exotic flowers and plants to the statue of the woman. “Oh yes. The local craftsman wanted to honor my taking over of the Territory.”
“Wow,” Lacey mumbled, then turned back to her mom and took a step closer. “You look…good. Did I mention yet how happy I am to see you? Confused, but happy?”
Her mom’s blue eyes filled with tears that she tried to fan away with her hand, her red lips curving into a smile. “Don’t get me started. We’ve got too much work to do for me to spend the next six days cryin’ and holding you.”
“That sounds good to me, but first I have to know why you had me kidnapped? All you had to do was contact me, and I would have gone willingly with Wythe.”
“Come on, have a seat over here. This is all incredibly complicated, but I’ll try and boil it down for you.”
Giving her mom a dry look, Lacey tried to hold back a smile as she said, “How about you start with how you ended up married?”
Raising a brow, her mom gave her an arch look, then said in just as dry of a tone. “I suppose that’s as good of place to start as any.”
Tara led Lacey to a carved wood swing that looked out over the edge of the treetops, the leaves up this high smaller, more like the leaves on Earth except for the odd blues, greens, and purples that dominated the color scheme. Still, it was an amazingly beautiful sight and both women were silent as they looked up at the various moons filling Kadothia’s early evening sky. Lacey had never seen anything like it, and she was literally stunned by the beauty, humbled to be gifted with such a view.
Reaching out, she grabbed her mom’s hand in her own and gave it a squeeze.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” her mom murmured. “I miss our home something fierce, but then I see something like this, and it makes the hurt go away a little bit.”
“Do you regret leaving Earth?” Lacey asked as her mom pushed the swing with her toe, the light swaying relaxing them both.
“I regret losing the people we had to leave behind, but I don’t regret leaving. I must have some wanderlust in my soul, because the idea of having a whole new galaxy to explore, one filled with such wonders, makes me feel so alive.”
Quirking a smile at her mom, she nodded. “I understand.”
“What about you? Do you regret leaving Earth?”
Stretching her legs out, she looked down at her toes, her thoughts far away. “I regret the way I left Earth, but I don’t regret coming here. It led me to Chel and Gwarnon.”
Her mom stopped the swing, then she turned to face Lacey. “I’m sorry we had to take you from them before you had a chance to bond, but we had to get your wedding gift ready.”
“Mom, you’re not making any sense.”
Her mom fumbled with something on her sparkly bracelet a moment before a silvery dome rose about them. Lacey’s implant quickly supplied that this was a privacy shield, used to keep out prying eyes and ears for private conversations. They were quite common on Kadothia, pretty much everyone had one, and most public venues offered larger versions that could fit entire dinner parties or extended families for a play. Her crystal implant continued to supply her with fascinating info, and she probably would have become lost in it if her mom hadn’t given her ribs a nudge.
“Lacey, pay attention.”
“Sorry, Mom,” she said automatically as her mom’s pointy elbow gave Lacey’s ribs a familiar nudge.
“What I have to tell you stays between us. Only Lord Rell, his family, and my bondmates are aware of all of this information. According to Lord Rell, there is no way Gwarnon and Chel will be allowed back on Kadothia without making some kind of huge sacrifice. They knowingly broke a big law by going to rescue you. Nosa and Cormac will get a scolding, but they were going to rescue their bride who had already begun her transition. Chel and Gwarnon had no idea you were at the Baladium, but they went anyways, on an ‘ill advised’ rogue rescue mission. The High Congress will have to punish them or the laws of Kadothia will be seen as weak, and something that can be broken without repercussions.”
“So, what? They should have just left me there? I should have died because the High Congress forbade anyone from participating in the Baladium? They didn’t even participate! They just helped Roxy and me survive. And now they’re being punished for it? That’s bullshit, Mom!”
“I know it is, sugar.” Her mom’s southern accent thickened as anger tinged her normally calm voice. “Lord Rell thought so as well, so he started to gather intelligence about which way the High Congress would be leaning. Most were in favor of censuring the men in various ways, but there was
a large contingent holding out for banishment.”
“Banishment?” Lacey gaped at her mom. “As in, kicked off the planet?”
“Not exactly.” Her mom looked at the night sky, then pointed to a distant moon, much smaller than some of the others glowing on the fantastical horizon. “See that moon? It’s being transformed right now to be a replica of Earth. Not an exact copy, because the lands will be different shapes because of the moon’s geography, but it is already being settled. The Kadothian scientists are bringing over samples of ever plant and animal life from Earth and trying to reproduce our environment. They’re having some trouble getting the atmosphere right, something about our suns being very different, but there are already Kadothian families settling on it and claiming Territory. The High Congress wanted to banish you there. As a potential Matriarch, you are far too valuable to waste by getting rid of you completely.”
Lacey watched a large bug with glowing blue wings bounce lightly off the privacy shield as she said, “That doesn’t sound too bad. I mean, I’d rather be here on Kadothia with you, but we’d only be like a planet away. That’s the Bel’Tan galaxy equivalent of living the next town over, right? We’d have to fly a couple hours to go visit grandma. No big deal. I thought you were going to say the High Congress wanted us executed or something. Living on an emerging planet would be neat.”
“No, you don’t understand. You would not have a territory. You’d be secluded with your husbands to an isolated island, forbidden from leaving for one hundred years.”
Swallowing hard, Lacey croaked out, “Changed my mind. That would suck.”
Reaching out, Tara stroked Lacey’s curls back with a worried look in her eye. “How much did Gwarnon tell you about his mother, Lady Melissi?”
“Enough to know that she’s a complete pscyho and a bitch of the worst kind.”
“Then you won’t be surprised to hear that she is working against you. She has a great deal of influence on the High Congress, more than Lord Rell initially realized. And she…” Lacey’s mom gave her knee a sympathetic pat, “she is not a good mother to her son.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Lacey growled.
“Lord Rell believes that Lady Melissi has recently become aware that Gwarnon plans on taking a great many of Lady Melissi’s citizens to what should be your new Territory. She is, of course, furious at the betrayal and wants to punish Gwarnon, Chel, and you. Lord Rell believes that the High Congress, due in part to her influence, will demand you relinquish your Territory, and all the people in it, to Gwarnon’s mother for safekeeping during a short time of exile to a prison island—probably no more than five or ten years. I could petition for control as well, but everyone highly doubts the votes would go in my favor. Not only am I a new Matriarch, I’m from Earth, which is a one two punch against me right now. Whereas Lady Melissi, despite all of her manipulations, still manages to maintain a good public persona. She would no doubt get stewardship of the land.”
Lacey chewed her lower lip before she said, “And her first act would no doubt be to get revenge on those who’d been rescued by Gwarnon, or left her Territory for his. Not to mention, I could easily see her burning an entire Territory down to ashes out of spite.”
“Exactly.” Her mom nodded, her blonde curls the exact same shade of pale blonde as Lacey’s shimmering in the moonlight. “But Lord Rell has a plan to prevent that. It isn’t an ideal situation, but it is better than nothing.”
A tiny, glowing red bird buzzed past their bubble, it’s bright light distracting Lacey momentarily before she turned back to her mother. “What’s the plan?”
“Well, it’s com—”
Lacey held up her hand with a grin. “Wait, let me guess? It’s complicated.”
“Yes, smart butt.” Her mom rolled her eyes. “It is complicated. But this time, those complicated laws are working in our favor. And it helps that we have Lady Elsin on our side.”
Lacey’s crystal implant helpfully supplied that Lady Elsin was basically the leader of the Northern Continent and an immensely powerful woman. Four of her seven sons had died in battle with the Hive, and of the three remaining, one happened to be a Warrior by the name of Lorn—now known as Lorn Westfall, Casey Westfall’s husband, and Roxy’s brother-in-law.
Tara’s gaze grew distant as she said with a fond smile, “Lady Elsin reminded me of the old Kadothian law about giving a daughter of a Matriarch land to start her own Territory before she’s mated. It is a law leftover from the days before the Great War that resulted in the Hive, one probably long forgotten, but still valid and used on occasion for cases like ours—where the daughter was born before the bonding. The original Kadothian Matriarchs were inherently territorial and having two strong women living in one household was a recipe for trouble. To help keep fights from breaking out, once a daughter reached a certain age and became engaged, her mother would give that daughter a piece of Territory to call her own and live on. It was up to the daughter to hold that land and make it prosper and a way to avoid siblings fighting over the Territory.” Her mom grinned at her. “You, my dear, are an unmarried young Kadothian woman, daughter of a Matriarch, engaged and about to go off on her own. I would like to gift you with some Territory I was recently given by Lady Elsin on Madre Tierra as a bonding present.”
Another barrage of information flooded Lacey’s mind as her crystal implant helpfully supplied that the moon Madre Tierra was roughly 2.5 times the size of the real Earth. It was named by the first Earth female to become a Matriarch, a poor young woman from Mexico City. She’d decided to name the planet Madre Tierra, or Mother Earth, in hopes that it would be the cradle for a new, better civilization than the one she’d left behind.
Over the centuries, the Kadothians had transformed a few of their many moons into habitable worlds, replicating the planets that Matriarch’s had left behind which no longer existed. Her gazed snagged on one moon, a bright orange, peach, and gold planet with pink swirls for clouds. That particular planet was a replica of another world that had been destroyed by a meteorite three thousand years ago. And that was Kadothian years, so in human years—
“Lacey.” Her mom snapped her fingers, startling her out of learning about the bride moons, as they were known.
“I’m paying attention, sorry,” Lacey said as she shook her head. “Sorry, still getting used to this crystal implant. It’s so weird to think a question then just…learn the answer.”
“It’s like the Internet,” her mom agreed as she shifted and rearranged her black dress. “But way worse for getting sucked into. Karwin likes to catch me staring off into space and teases me that I have drool running down my chin as I learn new things.” Her face went kind of blank for a moment, then the familiar ‘can do’ fire started to flare in her blue eyes. “Right, we have to get going. Are you ready for the ceremony?”
“Ceremony?”
“Yes, we need to broadcast it to your husbands. Phin sent me a mental message that we need to get moving.” Her mom stood up, the black gown she wore falling around her feet in a swirl of fabric. “Come on, lazy bones. Up and at ‘em.”
Standing, Lacey hurried to catch up to her mother after she’d removed the privacy bubble. “Where are we going? What ceremony?”
“The one to give you land on Madre Tierra so you and your husbands can start your own Territory and don’t have to worry about what will happen if the High Congress takes your Territory on Kadothia.” Her mom gave her an arch look. “Did you hear a word I said?”
Musing that she could still feel like a chastised little kid, even though she was twenty-two, Lacey snorted. “I was listening. But why a public ceremony, and why do we have to hurry?”
“Gwarnon’s people, your future citizens, are all waiting in orbit around Madre Tierra, waiting for you to officially claim the Territory under the old Matriarchal laws, so they can land and start working on making it their new home. You’ve got close to a million people in orbit or waiting to transport to Madre Tierra.” Th
at made Lacey stagger to a stop, but her mom grabbed her hand and dragged her along. “Come on. Hustle. We need to get this done. Phin says Gwarnon and Chel are about to face the High Congress.”
They rushed past a nighttime garden filled with glowing delights Lacey would have loved to explore if her mom hadn’t been ripping her arm out of her socket.
Evidently, Lacey wasn’t the only one who’d gone through the transition and come out stronger for it.
They approached a door leading into what looked like an enormous stone manor perched among the vast limbs of the trees. As big as an eight-lane highway, the trees branches felt more like roads than vegetation. Her crystal tried to flare to life and tell her all about the trees, but she shut it down. She needed to focus if they were going to outwit Lady Melissi and her allies on the High Congress.
Chapter 10
Gwarnon
He stared at the holographic display of his mother, the technology making it appear as if she actually sat at the table across from him on his ship.
With long, blue streaked black hair like his own and lovely silver eyes, she was one of the most physically beautiful women the Lord of Life had created. She used that beauty like a weapon, though it was ineffective against him. Not only was he her son, but he loathed her and knew her soul and mind were tainted. Despite this fact, she’d dressed for seduction—as usual. Her prefect breasts pressed up in her black Matriarch gown for full effect, the gleam of her bonds evident against her pale skin. Behind her, his four fathers stood, her men either just as depraved as her or too weak to stop her.
At Gwarnon’s side stood Chel, and his blood brother’s hatred for Lady Melissi mixed with Gwarnon’s own. Both men were dressed in their officer’s uniforms, the deep green of Chel’s armor reflecting the light while the black Gwarnon wore seemed to absorb it. Lacey had only been gone for ten hours, but he already seethed with the need to go look for her. Lord Rell swore he would find her, but Gwarnon was running out of patience. With every moment that passed without Lacey, his inner beast got stronger and stronger, clawing at the bonds surrounding his soul, making Gwarnon linger alarmingly close to what his soul knew was the Madness.